Russian airstrikes solidifying Assad’s grasp on power

BEIRUT — Weeks of Russian airstrikes in Syria appear to have restored enough momentum to the government side to convince President Bashar Assad’s foes and the world community that even if he doesn’t win the war, he cannot quickly be removed by force.

That realization, combined with the growing sense that the world’s No. 1 priority is the destruction of the Islamic State, has led many to acknowledge that however unpalatable his conduct of the war, Assad will have to be tolerated for at least some time further.

The most dramatic sign of that came this week with a statement by Secretary of State John Kerry that Assad’s future will be determined by the Syrian people, suggesting in the clearest way yet that he can stay on for now and be part of a transition.

“The Russians with their military intervention have basically said you can refuse to talk to Bashar Assad, but that means that you won’t get a political solution,” said Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

Still, significant gaps remain between the United States and Russia on Assad’s future, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said Wednesday, emphasizing that the U.S. position on Assad has not changed.

“There is going to have to be a political transition, and Assad will have to go,” Power said.

Russia, a key backer of Assad, began a campaign of airstrikes in Syria on Sept. 30 at a critical juncture in the civil war, when Assad’s forces were fast losing ground to the rebels around areas considered key to the government’s survival.

While Moscow says its airstrikes target the Islamic State and other “terrorists” in Syria, much of the Russian air campaign has focused on more moderate forces fighting Assad in the country’s central and northern region, where the Islamic State has little or no presence.

The results have been slow in coming. Despite nearly 11 weeks of crushing Russian airstrikes, government troops aided by Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian allied forces have failed to reverse losses in the northern province of Idlib and in Palmyra, the ancient desert town in central Syria that fell to the Islamic State over the summer.

The airstrikes, however, have helped Assad slow or halt rebel advances on several fronts. And he has captured dozens of villages in northern and western Syria.

The government’s biggest victory so far was last month’s lifting of a three-year siege on the air base of Kweiras by extremist groups in the northern province of Aleppo.

That was followed Monday by Syrian troops’ capture of a sprawling air base near Damascus that had been held by rebels for three years, bolstering the government’s presence in an area overwhelmingly controlled by opposition forces.

And on Wednesday, government forces captured a strategic mountain in the northwest, inching closer to a rebel-held stronghold in the coastal province of Latakia.